Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

“Then you’ll have tried. We’ll have tried.”

She didn’t immediately respond. For the second time in a very short day they stood within inches of each other, fully engaged in their silence. That connection zinged to life again; Karin felt her smile fade.

Flirting was one thing. Appreciating…even flinging. She was no stranger to the semicasual fling, though she’d avoided the totally random fling and the formal fling. Semicasual suited her. Suited her life.

But her life had changed. And there was nothing casual about this moment.

She slid aside, leaving him in communion with the screen door. “Even if I leave, I can’t just walk away. I’ve got to make arrangements.”

He backed up until his calves bumped the porch seat, putting distance between them and rubbing one eyebrow as though he weren’t quite sure what had just happened between them. “Then you’ll come to the safe house? Revisit Melton Run Park?”

She gave him a shrug that looked like assent…and was anything but.

Like most marks, he saw what he wanted to see.

He tagged along on her chores. She set him to pumping water from the old-fashioned hand pump by the goat shed and left him to ration out alfalfa pellets for the two nanny goats, one of whom had a young kid at her side.

“You should wait-” he started, stopping only when she cocked her head at him, raising an eyebrow in clear excuse me? fashion. “I’d prefer to keep you in sight.”

She snorted. Not at all genteel. “You think Dewey is going to sit quietly while anyone unfriendly approaches?” At his name, the dog waved his plume of a tail, on his way to the crest of the hill that overlooked the property.

He grunted, still pumping. “Not likely.”

She unabashedly watched the play of muscle beneath his rolled up shirtsleeves. His jacket lay on the fence in a spot that no man familiar with goats would have risked, and the Ruger now sat in a belt holster. “If you think these guys are that much of a threat, then why aren’t you calling your feeb friends?”

That got a wince. “I’m not high on their list right now.” Still pumping, still looking good. “They’d send someone out, and then they’d shut me down.”

“Wow.” She kept her voice light. “You do lay all your cards on the table, don’t you?”

He stopped pumping, straightened. “As opposed to reassuring you that everything’s under control, blah blah blah? That’s just what I don’t want to do. I want you to leave with me as soon as possible, not dawdle here over a billy goat.”

“They’re girls,” Karin informed him primly. “And be nice to them-you’ll be drinking Agatha’s milk tonight at dinner.”

He didn’t seem to have a response for that. Just as well. She ducked into the shed, where she clattered around measuring pellets, tossing hay out the back for the beef cow and the sheep and nabbing a stool and then a milk pail. She tossed pellets into the ground feeder for Edith, and Agatha jumped to the raised milking stanchion in anticipation of her own meal and milking. Dave watched with a distracted fascination.

Off on the ridge, Dewey got to his feet, glanced back at Karin with another acknowledging wave of his tail, and trotted down toward the end of the wooded hill. “He’s okay,” Karin said, before Dave could ask. “Just a squirrel or maybe a snake.”

“A snake,” Dave said, quite abruptly checking the ground at his feet. “You’re not just saying that to-”

“Copperheads,” Karin said cheerfully. “Rattlers. We got ’em. And who is this Owen guy, anyway? Your brother?”

He lifted his head to stare at her. “How did you-”

“Because you talked to him like a brother,” she told him briskly, pulling the pail out from under Agatha so the goat could finish eating in peace. The kid eased warily around her legs; Karin dipped a finger in the milk and gave it to him. “Like a big brother, actually. A big brother who can supply a safe house. Now there’s something you don’t find every day.”

“No.” Dave’s features closed down. No trespassing.

Except she’d never been one to heed the signs. Stay off the grass, no trespassing, members only…those were for people who didn’t bother to get around them. Karin did what she needed to accomplish her goals, signs or no signs. “What’s that about?” she asked. “You two don’t get along?”

He shook his head, short and sharp. “It’s irrelevant.”

“Oh-ho,” she said, scratching the kid behind the ears and heading for the gate, a solid wood slat gate that stood up under any goat onslaught. “You think you can break into my life, bring along some goons, push me about lost memories I have no desire to regain, and then draw the line at answering a question or two? I don’t think so.” She felt not a moment’s guilt that they weren’t her memories. It was her life now, and that was enough. “Fair’s fair, Mr. Hunter.”

His impatience turned to outright annoyance. “That’s the way it is. I’m the investigator, you’re the witness. One of us asks questions, and the other answers.”

She gave him one of Ellen’s shrugs just to keep him off balance; made her voice into Ellen’s softer tones. “Except you’re not in the best position to make the rules, are you? You can’t even go to the FBI-not until you have the proof you need. So really, whether I feel like helping depends on you.”

Dave jerked his gaze to hers, eyes deep with disbelief. “A little boy’s life-!”

“Exactly,” she said. He stared; she added another shrug.

He shook his head. “You’re not like you were,” he said, out loud for the first time, though Karin knew he’d been thinking it. Just as well. Face the issue head-on.

“Yeah,” she told him. “You might say it was a life-changing accident.”

True enough.

He narrowed his eyes. “If you really don’t want to cooperate, I can just walk away. Leave you here. Of course, I don’t think you’d be alone for long.”

Karin couldn’t help it-she burst into laughter. Not this man. She knew that much already. “But you wouldn’t.”

He stared at her a moment longer and then broke away, muttering a series of indecipherable words under his breath. French words. Huh. He looked as if he wanted something to hit, but even in the height of the moment obviously realized he’d only break his hand on the stout post beside which he stood. He repeated the curse and turned back to her-hands on his hips, and completed the Ralph Lauren Polo model image with the simmering anger behind his glare. “Owen and I ‘get along’ just fine. I was supposed to go into the family business. I didn’t. He hasn’t given up.”

And what, exactly, was the family business?

But she’d pushed enough for now. She didn’t want him on edge. She wanted him confident and comfortable with her. She wanted him off guard and trusting…and she wanted that space so he wouldn’t see it coming when she walked away.

Dave looked as though he didn’t quite believe she’d let the conversation drop. He didn’t move as she headed toward the house. She had to reach Amy Lynn and leave credit with her at the farm store…and she’d call the farm store and let them know this particular part-timer wouldn’t be in to work this week.

For starters.

Myriad things ran across Karin’s mind as she opened the gate, slipped through and latched it again. Which way to run. When to do it. She glanced at his pistol and considered the impulse to acquire it before she left.

He’d been watching her with silent and somewhat wary attention, but now his head snapped around, responsive to Dewey’s angry bark.

Karin said, “It doesn’t have to mean anything. We get kids cutting through now and then. They tease him sometimes.”